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Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (9th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 11.5%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 6.9%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Vagner Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced data security with seamless integration and static website capabilities
S3 is a great service offering numerous possibilities. It allows for storing objects and files of various types. I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB. Despite being focused on security, I leverage features such as cryptography and integration with CloudTrail.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Great for storing all types of data."
"I don't have any problems with the solution. It's issue-free."
"Amazon S3 is a stable solution."
"Technical support is excellent."
"The most valuable features are VNet, virtual machines, and Elastic Kubernetes Service."
"Easy to use, very intuitive, fast, and quite flexible."
"Amazon S3 is very stable, and I have never had any performance issues."
"Feature-wise, Amazon S3 is the cheapest and it's reliable."
"It's very easy to set up, and within 40 minutes, you can apply storage notes in Azure."
"The storage tiering is definitely the most valuable feature... With respect to tiering, the inactive data is pushed to a lower tier where the storage cost is cheap, but the access cost is high."
"The Cloud Manager application that's on the NetApp cloud site is easy to use. You can set up and schedule replications from there, so you don't have to go into the ONTAP system. Another feature we've recently started using is the scheduled power off. We started with one client and have been slowly implementing it with others. We can cut costs by not having the VM run all the time. It's only on when it's doing replication, but it powers off after."
"Replication to the cloud is the most valuable feature. Deduplication and compression are also very important to us. We are in the process of adopting to the cloud. We are going to AWS and we are trying to do a safety technician call out with integration to the cloud. NetApp allows us to move some of the volume to the cloud, at the same time that we continue providing the cloud services that we have on premises."
"The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site."
"If you have a fair amount of experience with NetApp, you can work on it very easily."
"We're using snapshots as well and it's a pretty useful feature. That is one of the main NetApp benefits. Knowing how to use snapshots in the on-prem environment, using snapshots on the cloud solution was natural for us."
"ONTAP has been very stable for us, specifically in the cloud environment. It allows us to have high availability as well as standalone systems if that's what we want within our specific workloads. Also, on-premise has been a very stable environment. We have very few outages and when we do, we work with support to get systems back online in a timely manner."
 

Cons

"We would like Amazon to reduce the price of storage."
"The pricing for Amazon S3 needs improvement. Another area for improvement is the file size change because it has some limitations that require more time for rendering, especially if you're not merely uploading a file, but reviewing that file, too."
"Amazon S3 could improve by providing some type of storage notification."
"The pricing and licensing are pretty complex."
"The major challenge is the inability to create more than ten policies."
"The product should enable users to create their own shortcuts."
"I would also like S3 to have the ability to do dynamic websites without the need to do reconfigurations outside of S3. You should be able to switch on dynamic websites in S3, and then it works. I shouldn't need to go elsewhere within Amazon Web Services to get a dynamic website to work."
"The tool helps us with data backup storage of payment files and helps us avoid issues with clients when we miss the data. For instance, in the payment file of my Google client, you can find details of one-to-one transactions like the payment information on the file header, payment ID, payment client ID, group headers, etc. We get these details into the file format of ISO which is the accepted format at JP Morgan & Chase. Once we get the file format, we process it through S3."
"I would like to see more aggressive management of the aggregate space. On the Cloud Volumes ONTAP that we use for offsite backup copies, most of the data sits in S3. There are also the EBS volumes on the Cloud Volumes ONTAP itself. Sometimes what happens is that the aggregate size just stays the same. If it allocates 8 terabytes initially, it just stays at 8 terabytes for a long time, even though we're only using 20 percent of that 8 terabytes. NetApp could undersize that more aggressively."
"Some of the licensing is a little kludgy. We just created an HA environment in Azure and their licensing for SVMs per node is a little kludgy. They're working on it right now."
"Not a perfect ten because it's not very efficient with upgrades and management."
"I would want more visibility and data analytics where we can see anomalies within the shares within the GUI."
"The only issue we had lately was that outside our VPC we could not reach the virtual IP, the floating IP. I heard that they have fixed that..."
"Their support and development teams can collaborate better to resolve an issue."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support."
"They definitely need to stay more on top of security vulnerabilities. Our security team is constantly finding Java vulnerabilities and SQL vulnerabilities. Our security team always wants the latest security update, and it takes a while for NetApp to stay up to speed with that. That would be my biggest complaint."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Amazon S3 is good. The pricing model is based on the usage of the solution."
"The tool's price is a little bit high, but it is reasonable."
"It's worth the price considering its functionality."
"This solution has reasonable pricing and a low cost."
"The price of Amazon S3 is competitive with other solutions."
"The licensing model is complex."
"The pricing can be improved."
"I have seen the pricing on AWS, but I believe it's a discount price for organizations."
"The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."
"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."
"Cloud is cloud. It's still expensive. Any good solution comes with a price tag. That's where we are looking to see how well we can manage our data in the cloud by trying to optimize the costs."
"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."
"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."
"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."
"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
75%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
2%
Educational Organization
49%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon S3?
We can easily connect to the AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?
S3 is a pay-as-you-go service. I pay based on the data volume I am using.
What needs improvement with Amazon S3?
There is a limitation with the data upload size, such as the five terabytes restriction. I would like to see an increase in the data upload limit, similar to DynamoDB, where there is no data limit.
What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
 

Also Known As

S3, Simple Storage Service
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.